METHODS
Defining Management Domains
Management domains represent a reframing of multi-jurisdictional issues by administrative concern rather than specific agency, which can mainstream conservation strategies focused on threats to salmon life history. Since management domains are defined as a “separation of administrative concerns,” it is important that each domain is categorized distinctly to minimize grey areas and blurring between individual domains or the exercise would fail to be useful. Aside from aspects of governance and organizational structure, 13 specific management domains were delineated for the purpose of this exercise. The domains were developed to comprehensively encompass the legislative context, administrative functions, and anthropogenic threats related to Pacific salmon in British Columbia.
We used the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) threat categories (Salafsky et al 2008) to classify legislation into anthropogenic activities that affect salmon. IUCN threat categories are widely used to assess threats as part of IUCN red list assessments, as well as in status assessments for Pacific salmon populations conducted by the Committee for the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC). We assigned level 1 and level 2 threat classification hierarchies from the IUCN categories into management domains to separate anthropogenic activities into different areas of administrative concern.
- Aquaculture and Hatcheries
- Climate Change and Natural Disasters
- Fisheries
- Forest and Range
- Governance, Policy, and Organizational Structure
- Human Disturbance
- Invasive Species and Disease
- Mining and Energy
- Pollution
- Spatial Designation
- Species Status and Assessment
- Transportation Infrastructure
- Water Use and Watercourse Modifications
Historically, much of the management decisions and activities related to salmon have been in response to identifiable threats to salmon health and population status. One common framework used to describe impacts to salmon are the Four H’s: Habitat, Hydropower, Harvest, and Hatcheries. Each management domain, as defined in this report, intentionally aligns with one of the four H’s. However, there are aspects of salmon management associated with governance and agreements rather than one of the other H’s, which was categorized as “Handshaking.” Because the management domains are centered around salmon/habitat impacts, this allows structurally for a clearer alignment with IUCN threat categories.
Figure 1: Flowchart showing alignment of Pacific salmon threat factors (Four H’s) with Management Domains in relation to legislation and jurisdiction.
Process
Assessment of legislative context is prone to subjective interpretation. The inclusion and exclusion of both the overall acts and the sections within the acts creates points of assumption and bias. For this exercise we cast as wide a net as possible and created a process that is publicly accessible, automated, and repeatable. Other researchers may repeat this process as future legislation and language changes. The process steps are:
- Legislation Accumulation and Review (CanLii)
- Parsing Legislation by Section and Heading (R)
- Assigning Management Domain and IUCN Threats (R)
- Building a Keyword List
- Assigning to Sections/Subsections (R)
- Assigning Scope (R)
- Assigning Clause Type (R)
1) Legislation Accumulation and Review
We focused our review on established Canadian federal and British Columbian provincial legislation (acts and regulations) for inclusion in the management domain process. We did not include specific departmental policy frameworks and processes throughout this exercise unless specifically referenced in the statutes, because these executive strategies are prone to changes in the political, administrative, and budgetary landscape. Indigenous legislation, Yukon Territorial legislation, municipal bylaws, and international conventions were not included explicitly. Although these laws are important for management of Pacific salmon, considering these regionally diverse rules was outside the scope of this legislative review.
The Canadian Legal Information Institute website, CanLII, provides an excellent resource for searching federal and provincial acts and regulations by keywords. We created a systematic process for querying legislation by:
- querying Pacific salmon specific terms (salmon, chinook, sockeye, etc.), which we called “Type A Legislation,”
- extracting adjacent keywords from the Type A Legislation (word frequency analysis),
- querying new keywords and IUCN Threat keywords in CanLII to find “Type B Legislation” (doesn’t mention salmon by name),
- filtering legislation regionally (excluding provinces other than BC), and
- downloading HTML files for relevant legislation directly from government websites.
Through the CanLII website, the user may look up the keywords queried in each act and regulation chosen. This allows the user to quickly assess the context of the word in the legislation and determine if the section is relevant to Pacific salmon. The full list of legislation reviewed in this process is available in Appendix I.
2) Parsing Legislation from HTML Files
The decentralized overlapping patchwork of Pacific salmon legislation in Canada creates a dynamic such that each act and regulation may contain a variety of administrative responsibilities, possibly attributed to different agencies. However, each act and regulation is comprised of sections and subsections that contain individual clauses that are more specific to a particular subject. For the purpose of the review, we used the individual clause as the sample unit for assignment into management domains and other corresponding attributes.
We parsed the HTML files using R and the rvest package to extract the text of each section and subsection grouped by heading. The text was then cleaned and standardized to remove any extraneous characters or formatting issues. Each section was assigned a unique identifier, and metadata such as the act name, jurisdiction, and legislation type (act or regulation) were recorded.
3) Assigning Management Domains and IUCN Threats from Keywords
The Management Domains and IUCN threats were assigned to each section based on a keyword list developed from the IUCN threat categories. The keywords were used to identify specific sections and subsections within the legislation. Each section was then assigned to one or more Management Domain and IUCN threat based on the presence of these keywords.Iteratively, we adjusted the keyword list to ensure that it accurately captured the scope of each Management Domain and IUCN threat. The keyword list is available in Appendix II.
4) Assigning Scope
We developed a scope classification system to categorize the sections based on their relevance to Pacific salmon. The scope was determined by the specificity of the language used in the section. The Scope categories were defined as follows:
- Salmon - refers to salmon specifically
- Fish - refers to fish that include salmon
- Habitat - refers to any habitat that includes salmon habitat
- Governance - refers to administrative processes and structure
Scope 1 was assigned separately to sections with the specific salmon keywords. Scope 2-3 were assigned during the Management Domain and IUCN Threat assignment.
5) Assigning Clause Type from Keywords
Similar the Management Domain assignment, we created a Clause Type keyword list to assess the nature or purposes of the clauses. Using language patterns within the legislation, we grouped Clause Type by:
- Administration, Application, & Structure
- Authorization & Mandate
- Designation
- Instruction
- Interpretation & Purpose
- Licence, Permitting, & Exemptions
- Prohibition, Restriction, or Limitation
